Mental Ray Lighting

In this beginner’s tutorial we’re going to illuminate a simple warehouse interior in 3ds Max. We’ll explore techniques to illuminate the interior through windows only. To keep things simple we’ll concentrate on lights that work with Final Gather and leave Global Illumination out of the discussion. I’m using 3ds Max 2011.

Step 2 Warehouse Geometry

This tutorial is about Mental Ray lighting but first we’ll create a really simple warehouse interior. Create a box ( Create panel > Geometry > Standard Primitives > Box ) in the top viewport . Modify the box ( Make a selection > Modify panel ) according to the following parameters:

And here is how the rendered interior with default lighting looks like:

Step 6 The Main Light Source

Now it’s the time to create the lighting. Let’s start with the main light source (sun). Create Mental Ray area spot ( Create panel > Lights > Standard > mr Area Spot ) in the front viewport. Place the spot light according to the picture below. Modify the spotlight ( Make a selection > Modify panel ) according to the following parameters:

Spotlight Parameters

Hotspot/Beam: 24

Falloff/Field: 26

General Parameters

Shadows: On (Ray Tracted Shadows)

( Tip: If you’d like to make the light more directional, just move the spotlight farther away from the warehouse. )

Render the image to see the lighting:

Step 7 The Environment

At the moment we can’t even see the windows because the background color is black (by default). Let’s go to the environment settings ( Rendering > Environment… ) and change the background color:

Open Material Editor ( Press ‘m’ in keyboard ). Drag and drop the Glow shader from environment settings to an empty material slot in Material Editor ( make sure to select ‘instance’ when asked ). Make the following adjustments to the Glow shader:Glow: White

Brightness: 4

Render the scene to see the effect:

Now that we can see the windows, let’s apply a glow around them. Apply Glare Camera Shader ( Rendering > Render Setup… > Renderer > Camera Effects > Camera Shaders > Output > Glare ) Just turn the output shader on, the glare shader should be selected by default. Render the image again to see the difference. ( The use of Glare shader is the reason for using Glow shader in the background instead of just white color. )

(The glow effect might seem really strong at the moment but in my opinion it works well in the final image. You can adjust the strength of the glow by adjusting the brightness of the glow shader or by adjusting the glare shader itself.)

Step 8 Indirect Lighting

At the moment we have only the spot light (sun). The image is very dark and there is no indirect light. Create a skylight ( Create panel > Lights > Standard > Skylight ) to simulate the indirect light coming from the windows. Apply ( Make a selection > Modify panel ) the following settings to the skylight:

Multiplier: 1,5

Render the scene to see the lighting:

Some light reaches the ceiling over the windows but as a whole the image still looks about the same. We need to drive more light inside the warehouse. Fortunately there is an easy way to do just that. Go to the right viewport and create two sky portals ( Create panel > Lights > Photometric > mr Sky Portal ) that are slightly larger than the windows and position them immediately outside the openings. Apply ( Make a selection > Modify panel ) the following parameters to the sky portals:

Multiplier: 1,5 ( The strength of the light )

( Sky portal needs a skylight to work. It gathers existing sky lighting into the interior scene. The arrow shows the direction of light flow. ) Let’s render the scene to see how the sky portals affect the lighting:

Let’s add bounced light to the equation to see if it makes any difference. Go to the Final Gather setup and apply the following settings ( Rendering > Render setup… > Indirect Illumination > Final Gather ):

Basic

Multiplier: 2 ( the strength of the effect )

Bounces: 5 ( a number of bounces indirect illumination does )

Render the scene to see the effect of indirect illumination.

Now there is noticeably more light inside. If you look carefully you can even see each corner of the room.

Step 10 Volume Light

Let’s make the image more interesting by adding some volumetric light rays coming from the windows. Go to the Atmosphere settings ( Rendering > Environment… > Atmosphere ) and add Volume light effect:

Your tutorial , teaches me lots of things xD , im a total newbie , and im very glad to find your blog this tutorial teaches me how to create a room , how to create lights and effects . I’ll be waiting for more tutorials each week xD . and your blog , does it uses Golden theory? looks very Good , sleek and clean :O the size for golden mean and your blog is almost near , i guess xD

Awesome! I’ve been looking for some quality 3ds Max tutorials and luckily I stumbled across your site. All of your tutorials are explained amazingly well and then end product it nice! Thanks, I learned a lot about lighting in this one!

Glare is there but it’s hidden. Read the comments section in my “3D Water – The Ocean” tutorial to find out more. If sky portals aren’t there you could try to increase the multiplier in your sky light to bring more light in.

Up till step 11. After adding volumn light there rays near to the two opening is a big lump while the ray nearer to end of wall is narrow like your photo examples. Cone of lights shown on the wall of opening. So fail to get the volumn light to work properly.

1) After turning on Ray Traced shadow instead of mental ray for the mrAreaSpot, the result rendered no longer show the windows on the floor and the opposite wall, though I could still see a faint trace of the volumn light but its very very light.

2) I have tried adjusting the angle of the light, tried turning ray trace on and off and mental ray on and off to do some experimentation and the conclusion is, its either or. If I use mental ray, I get that line of likes on the upper corner of the wall directly opposite the window. and if I use the mental ray I have to redue volume light density to 5. Else the whole scene would be washed out. If I use ray trace, I get really nice overall lighting but lost the windows on the floor.

I have followed through your tutorial completely so I am clueless as to why I am getting these results. But still its great learning process to explore the differences.

1) After turning on Ray Traced shadow instead of mental ray for the mrAreaSpot, the result rendered no longer show the windows on the floor and the opposite wall, though I could still see a faint trace of the volume light but its very very light.

2) I have tried adjusting the angle of the light, tried turning ray trace on and off and mental ray on and off to do some experimentation and the conclusion is, its either or. If I use mental ray, I get that line of light on the upper corner of the wall directly opposite the window, and if I use the mental ray I have to redue volume light density to 5, else the whole scene would be washed out. Over result is closer to your project.If I use ray trace, I get really nice overall lighting but lost the windows on the floor.

I have followed through your tutorial completely so I am clueless as to why I am getting these results. But still its great learning process to explore the differences.

Thnaks for your really awesome Tutorials! I like every one.
One Question for this Tutorial: What is the different between the Final Gather and the Indirect Illumination ? The Result without the FG and with Indirect Illumination is similar.

Hi, I learned a lot at here with 3D max 2009, and have a problem happened in Step 8 “Indirect Lighting” the Skylight isn’t preview even tune up at the Skylight Parameters the “Multplier” and two mr Sky Portal are also ! Glare and Volume Light both enable to see. The rendering go very slowly.
If Render – Indirect Illumination – Global Illumaination switched on with Multplier is “1”, it was brighten up the room, the effect is not as Step 11.

my Mental ray Renderer set up may be something effect switch off, which part is skip on the render setup planel.

I’am architect, I wl do bldg views using 3ds max,
its a nice tutorial, and I’m impressed with ur tute,
and I want to know that in my sys.. I’m not able to find the maps>standard>bitmap>
and there it is showing no items match ur search

please reply me….
and I use 3dsmax 2011,, or else mail me on my mail id……

WHY doesn’t my project look ANYTHING like yours after step 6??? after I add the spot light, the whole “spot” inside gets lit up, disregarding the “windows” totally. And if final gather is on, the whole friggin room gets more or less lit up. PLEASE help, I don’t understand any of this Have tried countless other tutorials but there seems to be some kind of fundamental setting difference between me and everyone else. Using 3dsmax 2011.

Your tutorial is fantastic.. worked great and give me lots of ideas for lighting.. my only question is if you had windows all around the room would you creat more mr areaspot one for each side of the room that has light and then adding the others as volume lights or would this be too much?
thanks,
Steve

I was looking for lighting tutorials and came into this page, nice tutorial. I just learned about volume light and flip thingy and indirect illumination.
I was wondering, if by any chance you have and exterior lighting tutorial, most settings I find are interiors. I have a new project, an exterior especial setting with furniture and fixtures with it and it is kinda hard to make a good lighting for my scenes..
Just by any chance if you have, thanks guys!

Awesome tutorial…my first fully complete scene using 3ds Max and its looking awesome. I’m new to 3D design and was curious about step 3; what would have been the result had we not flipped the normals of all the polygons…does it have to do with where the mapped materials/textures would appear? (please excuse my lack of initiative)

Great tutorial thank you for providing this. I followed it once and it came out looking the way I wanted.
However
the second time I tried it, I couldn’t get the render to look the way it did with smooth volume light shining into the room.
Instead
what I got was a staggering, stuttering appearance of light coming into the room. It’s as if the light thought it was hitting a surface multiple times between the window and the floor, so there are rectangular traces of light surrounding the light path.
I asked my peers about this problem and they say it looks like there is something going on while the render is going through one of its passes? I can’t seem to re-create the success of my first attempt.

My mr Area Spot light doesn’t seem to be working, and I’ve no idea why. It appears to work in the modelling window, but when I try to render the scene there’s no light coming from it, there’s only the light coming through the windows. What am I doing wrong??

Hi, And the file take quite long time to render when i try the tutorial in my interior with furniture …is that have any solution to lighten my file size ?
Thank you so much ~ and i like your tutorial ~ look cool ~with clear explanation

Hi All, I just had a go of this tutorial, very good good amount of info and picutres. However I don’t get the same results?!?!
My volumetric light is pixelated and i don’t have as much shadowing in the room. Also with the ‘sun’ hotspot and beaam fall off 24/26 i don’t get any feathering on the cast shadow?

Just wondering is there any other details I may have missed, also does volumetric thing take a very long time to process? I have new machine with oodles of power oodles! but seemed rather slow, 10mins at 640×480

Great tutorial. I got a satisfactory result even in 3Ds Max 7. Though I prefer making rooms using shell modifies than flipping normals. I had absolutely no idea about volume lights. Thanks to your tutorial, now I do know.

Great tutorial. really appreciate that you show a sample render after each step, so we can understand where things went wrong if the final render doesn’t come out right. I also really appreciate that the tutorial doesnt require any special plug-ins. Thanks!

oooooh..how great are you..thank you very much..i’v been suffering to know this without going crazy with too many steps..you just made it clear and simple..i hope you have more tutorials..i’m enjoying lighting for the 1st time ..thanks alot

1. I put an instance of the Camera Glare into the material editor and set “Spread” to 2.5
2. I turned on the Near and Far Attenuations on the mr Area Spot: “Near” Start 0.0, End 16.0; “Far” Start 16.0, End 65.56
3. I turned on the Use Attenuation Color in the Volume Light.

Very good tutorial. I didn’t know about volume and glare. Thanks for share. Keep going uploading more tutorial like this. suggestion: you could make a tutorial mental ray indoor lighting, dining room with light from outside and inside with lights too. Thanks!